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Steve Burg
Stephen "Steve" P. Burg was a conceptual artist and illustrator who made an unwittingly early Star Trek contribution to the spin-off television series, . It was he who originally designed for David Stipes Productions the Promellian battle cruiser, built by Ron Thornton, for use in the 1986 movie , which was later reused for the third season episode . A decade later, Burg, now member of visual effects company Foundation Imaging, also did the conceptual artwork for 's crash landing in the episode , as well as creating, both concept with Dan Curry and CGI build with John Teska, Species 8472 for Voyager, (VOY Season 4 DVD-special feature, "The Birth of Species 8472") and on which he co-authored an article for the UK publication Effects Special. Though Rick Sternbach was, and remained, the main production illustrator for Voyager, confidence in, and ease of cooperation with Foundation grew to such an extent that a few of its CGI artists were on occasion allowed to design the "ship-of-the-week". Aside from Brandon MacDougall, Burg had the distinction of being the other one. His responsibilities as designer entailed design and build of the CGI model of the Species 8472 bio-ship, as well as the design of the Krenim weapon ship (built by his now supervisor Thornton) for the season four two-parter , while Sternbach himself remained responsible for the smaller Krenim ships. (Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models, issue 32, September 1998, pp. 51-52; ) He shortly returned as an independent contractor in the employ of Foundation where he worked as a visual effects art director for the 2001 DVD release. On his work on Species 8472, Burg was interviewed for . As CGI illustrator, Burg has contributed to several outings in the Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar series. Career outside Star trek A self-taught illustrator, Steve Burg was born in New Jersey, but did receive a formal education after he moved to California, becoming an alumnus of the Film Graphics and Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts. Burg has worked as animator, conceptual artist, illustrator, and storyboard artist on projects such as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984, together with a slew of future Star Trek alumni), the horror film The Wraith (1986), the science fiction adventure The Abyss (1989), the science fiction film Total Recall (1990), the science fiction sequel Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), J. Michael Straczynski's television series Babylon 5 (1993, already in the employ of Foundation Imaging and the ships his most recognizable contributions, design elements of which later creeping up in his Star Trek ship designs). After his tenure at Foundation and Voyager, Burg worked as an independent contractor on the science fiction films Waterworld (1995), Contact (1997) and The Matrix (1999), the animated Titan A.E. (2000), Bryan Singer's superhero adaptation X-Men (2000), the science fiction comedy Evolution (2001), the remake The Time Machine (2002), the fantasy film The Chronicles of Riddick (2004, alongside Gregory Jein, Daren Dochterman, Glenn Hetrick and Ve Neill), the science fiction film AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004), the Alien prequel Prometheus (2012, co-written by Damon Lindelof) and its 2017 follow-up Alien: Covenant, and more recently the science fiction movies Interstellar (2014, again alongside Jein) and The Martian (2015). Bibliography *"Species 8472–design concept", Effects Special, Volume 1.1, 1998, pp. 60-66 – Co-author *''Star Trek: Ships of the Line'' calendars – Co-illustrator **2003 – May and October spreads Further reading *"Behind the Scenes: Designing Species 8472", , 2001, pp. 27-33 External links * – official site * – official blog * * Category:Art department Category:Special and Visual effects staff Category:Star Trek calendar artists